“No indeed, Lady Inskip—no, indeed, Lady Inskip. Of course you know best; ah! and ah! Lizzie—”
“Bless my soul!” said the doctor, excitedly, “I don’t see why Miss Lizzie cannot go just as properly as your daughter, my lady! It’s all nonsense, and she shall go!” And the doctor, without asking anybody’s leave or license, at once handed Lizzie into the pony carriage by the side of Tom. Getting in himself, and telling the campaigner cordially “Good-day, my lady! good-day,” he drove off triumphantly, although slowly, out from the glade, in and out of the trees, on to the road, and so slowly homeward to The Poplars, with our wounded hero lying back in Lizzie’s arm—a very different plight to the gallant turn-out in which Tom had set out so hopefully in the morning for Lady Inskip’s fête champêtre.
The campaigner was certainly defeated to some extent, but she was not discomfited. Oh! dear, no. She had secured one of her birds—Pringle—at all events, for he was as devoted as she could wish to Laura; and as for the other, although he had been brought down, winged is the word—so unfortunately by the young imp, still, all was not lost there yet—she had only to act, and it would run hard, so she thought, if she did not succeed in throwing on one side “that artful little minx.”
She now bethought herself of her company. The day was far spent, and she was not going to let the whole thing break up in such an unsatisfactory manner. She was too knowing for that; consequently she threw cold water on the manifest sympathy for Tom.
“Pooh!” she said, “it’s not much. The doctor said he would be well in a day or two, it’s only a mere scratch!”
Of course several joined in with her, and followed suit. When Lieutenant Harrowby ventured to suggest that it “must be very painful, you know, ba-iey Jo-ve!” he was caught up at once by the choleric Captain Curry Cucumber, “Nice soldier you are, my fine fellow! to think so much of a mere flea-bite—a mere flea-bite. By Jingo! when I was at Rhamdaghur—” And he was going to retail some of his East-Indian reminiscences, when he was adroitly stopped by the campaigner’s suggesting that they should return to the festal board, which all thereupon did, sitting down again with much gusto to the remnants of the feast.
The evening waxed on, and then they packed up, and sallied homewards. It is wonderful what a little break the absence or injury of one makes in a large party. The proverb, “out of sight, out of mind,” is true enough, although it contradicts that other veracious proverb, which tells us that “absence makes the heart grow fonder!”
Pringle and the young officers finished the evening very agreeably with the Inskip girls at their residence, the former not agitating himself much about his sister, “of whom,” the campaigner observed, “she was sure Doctor Jolly would take every care, notwithstanding his rudeness to her!” So everything went well with Lady Inskip, and the pic-nic was voted a success, although Captain Curry Cucumber dubbed her “an infernal old harridan, by Jingo!” and wished he had had her “out at Rhamdaghur, by Gad!” and he would have taught her how to “insult an army-man, by Jingo!” in taking no notice of him, while she “could pamper a civilian, by Gad!”—alluding, we very much fear, to the Revd. Herbert Pringle, to whom the campaigner had been really very ingratiating. If only that accident had not happened, who knows what other success might not have fallen to her share! But Lady Inskip had the satisfaction that night of boxing Mortimer’s ears.
As the pony carriage drove very slowly, it was evening, nearly night, by the time Tom and his companions arrived at The Poplars: the house was wrapped in gloomy silence.
The doctor jumped down quickly, and Lizzie after him, when she took the opportunity of saying to him, quickly, “I will wait here, doctor, until you come out, and do tell me then how he is!” She wished Tom good-bye, and walked on, apparently home to the parsonage, but she waited at the corner, and peeped back to see him carried in; after which she shrunk into the shades again to the garden-gate of The Poplars, and waited patiently for the doctor to come out.